How does one decide which of Shakespeare's plays should be included in his "top twenty"? The answer has been provided by Bard on the Boards, "What's Playing Where," which has ranked the plays according to how frequently they were produced from 2012 through May 25, 2020, at more than 200 theater companies in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Denmark, and the United States. That ranking has been followed in this book.
The text of the plays used in this book was produced by PlayShakespeare.com, which has made expertly edited versions of Shakespeare's works freely available under the only truly open-source license for those works. That means anyone can use them in any way without charge, so you can freely produce the plays without worrying about whether or not you are violating someone's copyright or license agreement.
To produce the text, the PlayShakespeare.com team used the First Folio of 1623 (and Quartos where applicable) and the Globe Edition of 1866 as their sources. They have edited and updated those versions to reflect the editorial standards of the PlayShakespeare.com scholarly team, so you can rely on the quality and interpretive accuracy of the texts. The overarching principles used were:
- Clarity: If the playwright's intent was clear, reinforce it. If ambiguous, clarify it.
- Modern: Use modern spellings with a light touch and modern scholarly interpretations.
- Playability: Is the line performable by an actor?
- Integrity: Stay as faithful as possible to the source material and commonly accepted scholarly interpretations.
- Inclusive: In cases where one edition omits text found in another, both texts are included.
Philosophically, all of this is meant to strike a balance between Shakespeare's original intent and the needs of modern readers, players, and audiences, making this one of the most useable editions ever published of Shakespeare's most popular plays.
This beautifully designed, large-format, printed version of the plays features the following:
- Running heads that include the play's title, act, and scene for easy reference.
- Fully spelled out speakers' names in boldface type for quick identification.
- Text indentation of partial lines to preserve blank-verse meter.
- Text set in the sturdy, modern, highly legible Bookerly typeface, making reading a pleasure.
- Acid-free, archival-quality paper for long-lasting durability.
Ron Severdia, the founder of PlayShakespeare.com notes, "Since the creation of these editions in 2005, we've taken many suggestions from scholars, teachers, theatre professionals, and aficionados all over the world to improve them. We consider them 'living' documents that have been 'forked', reused, edited, hacked, and much more. They're used as the basis for performances at theatres like the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Prague Shakespeare Company, and in countless classrooms. They're also used in the popular Shakespeare Pro apps for Apple and Android devices, which have currently been downloaded more than 15 million times. They've even been used in various open-source technology projects to search, analyze, and visualize Shakespeare's works in new ways. The possibilities are limitless. What started as a website project has become an incredible way to empower Shakespeare lovers all over the world."
